3/10/2017

Pound Of Flesh (2015)

Deacon Lyle (Van Damme) is just a guy out on the town in the
Philippines, when he brings a nice lady home from a disco. When he wakes up in
the morning, he is in a pool of his own blood and discovers someone has opened
him up and stolen his kidney. Deacon then teams up with his religious brother
George (Ralston), his old buddy Kung (Aleong), and the mysterious Ana (Peters),
all in some sort of mission to get to the bottom of the kidney conspiracy. A
baddie named Drake (Shahlavi) - a man more unpleasant than the music made by
his namesake - may be behind this, or is there a conspiracy that goes...ALL THE
WAY TO THE TOP? Further complicating things is the fact that Lyle’s niece is on
the kidney transplant list. Will Deacon Lyle kidney-punch his way back to renal
health? Just try to hold in your excitement...

They’ve Taken (2008) my kidney! is basically Van
Damme’s battle cry in this somewhat puzzling new outing. Somehow a missing
kidney isn’t as compelling a motive for revenge as a missing daughter...or are
we missing something? He still has one left, as far as we know. Van Damme is
good in the fight scenes, and he moves especially well for someone who has just
had some unauthorized, highly-invasive surgery done on him. There’s even a
novel excuse for him to do his famous split (yes, he’s still doing it, and
proud of it, it seems) - but some not-so-novel excuses for rampant Van Damme
nudity. We don’t need to see your whole body to know you’ve been kidneynapped.

But we give ol’ JCVD credit for trying. The opening alley
fight is a standout, and the overall vibe of the movie is on the serious side,
in keeping with most of the recent DTV JCVD output. Perhaps to maintain the
“dark” vibe, to counterbalance the kidney-stealing plot, there are some
religious themes that run throughout. This is mainly achieved by the brother
character, the fact that Van Damme is named Deacon, and the fact that Deacon
beats people up with a bible. Yes, as a society, we’ve reached a point where
we’re subjected to Biblefighting. This might not be a good thing.

But rather than concentrate on “dark” subject matter,
director Barbarash - of fellow Van Damme vehicle Assassination Games (2011) and
Michael Jai White vehicle Falcon Rising (2014) fame - REALLY should have
“turned off the dark”, if we may paraphrase the title of that brilliant
Broadway play. Why, oh, why do we always have to ask that filmmakers turn the
lights on in their movies? Is that really so much to ask? And another no-no is
here that is painfully obvious - green screen and CGI. Is it really so much
better and easier to have chintzy-looking computer-graphic bullet hits on walls
and gunsmoke? We’re really getting tired of what we call “Alt-E”, meaning some
dork in an editing suite somewhere hitting “Alt-E” for “Explosion” instead of
employing the technical mastery of pyrotechnics experts.So, to recap, we have barfights, darkfights,
and biblefights. (We didn’t mention the barfight before, but of course it’s
there).

With the money they spent on CGI and green screen, they
could have used on lighting. Priorities, people. There is some light
Punchfighting, but it’s barely there and hard to see (like everything else).
Van Damme’s buddy Kung - played by Aki Aleong of Gang Wars (1976), Out for Blood (1992) and Deadly Target (1994), among others - could have been played by
Mako, if he hadn’t died in 2006. Actor Darren Shahlavi - so memorable as the
baddie in Bloodmoon (1997) passed away in 2015 and the film is dedicated to
him. With his passing, we’ve lost another actor/Martial Artist so integral to
the fabric of the DTV action movies we’ve dedicated ourselves to celebrating.
He will be missed.

On a lighter note, one of the highlights of the movie,
appearing almost exactly an hour in, is when we see the actual kidney donor
list. This might mark the first time we’ve seen an English-as-a-second-language
attempt at a list of people’s names. We have Varko Bosilhoc, Consuela Pym, John
Smythe II and even Simon Rants III. Will this be important to the plot? Just
wait and find out. Also there was a Boris Sharlyakov, but it looked like it
said Borts Sharlyakov. We wish it said Borts. We really do. There are other
names on the list, but those were some highlights. Maybe it’s just us, but we
found that funny.

Some elements of Pound of Flesh are worth your time, but
what’s good about the movie is dampened by the inability to see anything, the
insistent usage of green screen/CGI, and some pretty dumb dialogue. (Let’s just
say Kung talking about how much he loves coffee isn’t likely to rival anything
said by Portia from The Merchant of Venice anytime soon). It’s kind of a mixed
bag for Van Damme. It doesn’t change his standing in our eyes or anything like
that, but with some simple tweaks, it could have been significantly better.

2 comments:

Roger Renman
said...

I agree. This movie was much-hyped, but it was a disappointment. I'm not sure if Van Damme is interested in doing 'fun' action movies like he used to earlier. As with Seagal, it seems like his heart simply isn't in it anymore.